Label Review. 

2019 album also available on CD.

Our Overview. 

Lamb return with their 7th studio album ‘The Secret of Letting Go’ after a hiatus of 5 years since the release of 2014’s ‘Backspace Unwind’. Lamb, who are Lou Rhodes and Andy Barlow originally formed in Manchester, UK in 1996 and released their acclaimed self titled debut album. Lamb fuse multiple electronic music styles with a distinctive mix of trip-hop, jazz, dub, breaks and drum and bass with Rhodes' gorgeous, arresting vocals. During a hiatus of several years when the duo split - 2004 to 2009 - Rhodes made a handful of acclaimed solo albums and Barlow produced other artists then to delight of fans in 2016 the duo toured their classic debut album on the 21st anniversary of its release.

‘The Secret of Letting Go’ is all about the space between sounds and was recorded in the space of a year between their home-studio in England’s South Downs and in India and Ibiza. Continuing to push the sonic envelope, title track, ‘The Secret of Letting Go’ was written in the moment the band decided they were splitting up and holds the corner for their endless experimentalism. 

From album opener "Phosphorus'" minimalist harmonics to the dying choral embers of "One Hand Clapping"; through the snaking sub-bass drops that drive the title track and "Moonshine" and into the whirl and spin of "Deep Delirium" and the simple piano loops that help "Imperial Measures" float above you, there's space everywhere. Sometimes it's evocative of sun-drenched horizons, at others it is contemplative, reflective; occasionally the space is itchy and anticipatory, pointing towards moments of ecstatic abandon. Throughout the record though, it's the space that allows Lou Rhodes' superlunary voice to glide and soar gloriously to bridge the silences in-between. It's all of this together that makes ‘The Secret of Letting Go’ such an utterly compelling return to form.

This year the band are set to play a handful of special, intimate shows this spring to introduce the album, followed by a summer of festival shows and a more comprehensive tour in Autumn.

Label Review.

2019 album also available on Vinyl.

Our Overview.

‘Undress’ is the new release from The Felice Brothers and their first in 3 years from the American folk-rock band and since 2016’s ‘Life In The Dark’ the band has undergone a significant lineup change, and now comprises members Ian Felice (vocals, guitar), James Felice (accordion, keys), Will Lawrence (drums) and Jesske Hume (bass).

Cut live to tape with very little overdubbing, ‘Undress’ was recorded in the late summer of 2018 in Germantown, New York. Band members Ian Felice, James Felice, Will Lawrence (drums) and Jesske Hume (bass) teamed up with producer Jeremy Backofen to record their most personal and reflective album to date.

“Many of the songs on the new album are motivated by a shift from private to public concerns”, says songwriter Ian Felice. “It isn’t hard to find worthwhile things to write about these days, there are a lot of storms blooming on the horizon and a lot of chaos that permeates our lives. The hard part is finding simple and direct ways to address them”.

‘Undress’ follows the bands 2016 album ‘Life In The Dark’ and finds the group in a very different place three years later. Between personnel changes, families growing and the political landscape, the result is a tighter, more-paired down release. Every song is a story, said James Felice. On this album everything was a bit more thoughtful, including the arrangements, the sonic quality and the harmonies.

Ian and James Felice grew up in the Hudson valley of upstate NY. Self taught musicians, inspired as much by Hart Crane and Whitman as by Guthrie and Chuck Berry, they began in 2006 by playing subway platforms and sidewalks in NYC and have gone on to release nine albums of original songs and to tour extensively throughout the world. Following the release of ‘Life in the Dark’, The Felice Brothers served as the backing band for Conor Oberst’s 2017 release Salutations and the subsequent tour. The band kicks off a US tour starting on April 27 2019 in Albany.

Label Review. 

2019 debut album also available on CD.

Our Overview. 

London five-piece Ezra Collective are announcing their debut album ‘You Can't Steal My Joy’ and marks the ensemble's return following the success of their genre bending 2017 EP ‘Juan Pablo: The Philosopher’. 

Synergy in motion, London five-piece Ezra Collective are proving themselves as a harmonious tour de force. Their sound nods respectfully to a classic jazz footprint, celebrating the originators whilst simultaneously carving a path solely their own. Ezra Collective marry the delicate technicalities of jazz musicianship with afrobeat and hip hop, tied together by a sound that’s unmistakably London. Their live show is one of dynamic union; the strength of their partnership shines in performances that are commanding yet sensitive, soulful and pertinently groove-laced. 

Following a joyous and stunningly cohesive show in May 2016, Boiler Room rightly labelled the group as “pioneering the new-wave of U.K. jazz”. As the genre enjoys a new lease of life that is gaining momentum across the country, Ezra Collective are adding their own fresh and imaginative face to a style that continues to be “as entertaining as it is educational” (Trench). In a year that saw them sell out legendary London venue Ronnie Scott’s not once but twice, 2017 also bought with it the release of their genre-bending second EP, ‘Juan Pablo: The Philosopher’. After Ezra Collective took the EP on a successful tour across the U.K and Europe and completely sold out of the vinyl, ‘Juan Pablo: The Philosopher’ went on to win the accolade of Best Jazz Album at Gilles Peterson’s esteemed Worldwide Awards in January 2018.

The five young Londoners played Quincey Jones’ birthday party and recently completed a mosh-pit-filled, sold out UK tour (culminating in a packed out 2,400 capacity hometown show), before headlining Winter JazzFest in New York. Ezra Collective’s forthcoming gigs include more US dates, SXSW, plus All Point East festival.

Label Review.

2019 album also available on Vinyl.

Our Overview.

Lydia Ainsworth - Toronto, Ontario Canada based artist - releases her highly anticipated third album ‘Phantom Forest’. The album introduces a lush, complex dream world that the singer, composer, and producer created and inhabited largely on her own. She produced all the songs, and wrote and performed everything on the self-released collection outside of a re-imagined cover of Pink Floyd’s “Green is the Color” and 2 other tracks (“The Time,” “Give It Back To You”), which started as instrumentals written by Survive’s Kyle Dixon (who composed the Stranger Things soundtrack with his bandmate Michael Stein), to which Ainsworth wrote melodies and added lyrics.

Ainsworth, who’s relocated to Los Angeles from Toronto since 2017’s ‘Darling of the Afterglow’, explains that the collection revealed itself to her “as a play taking place in Mother Nature’s vanishing home,” aka ‘Phantom Forest’ and that she’s singing from 3 perspectives: herself, Mother Nature, and Greek Chorus. For instance, of the album’s opener, “Diamonds Cutting Diamonds,” she explains: “The Greek Chorus sets the scene, narrating and offering direction on how to enter Phantom Forest. It’s my hope that the listener will imagine the narration to be directed to them as well, as they begin the journey of the album.” You’ll get a sense of this from the collection’s edenic cover art and the playful, pastoral video for the album’s first single, “Can You Find Her Place.”

Its inspiration came from Ainsworth’s love for Italian Renaissance painter Botticelli’s 15-century masterpiece “Primavera,” an allegorical representation of the burgeoning fertility of the earth in spring. She notes: “The video features the Greek gods of the painting in a choreographed Baroque style dance.” Keeping with the personal feel of the collection, her sister Abby Ainsworth directed the clip. In line with the classical and historical depths of Phantom Forest, Ainsworth, who holds a Masters Degree in film scoring composition from NYU and studied composition as an undergrad at McGill, notes that although the album might be considered pop, she approached it as an orchestrator. “Even if I’m dealing purely with synths,” she says, “The songs are like a score, each one an evolving journey. I love to use strings so I’ve included my string arrangements on ‘Tell Me I Exist’ and ‘Can You Find Her Place.’ I recorded live musicians on drums, bass, and guitar on ‘Edge of the Throne,’ ‘The Time,’ and ‘Floating Dream,’ and wove those live elements into my programmed elements.”

‘Phantom Forest’ is a beautiful, vast collection that mixes the historical and the hands on, with hooks about the apocalypse and people obsessively using face-recognition software to see what paintings their face match with, in search of some kind of connection.  It’s a journey that holds up to close listening (and lyric reading) and to dance floors, but that can also exist on a purely emotional plane. In all cases, it asks that you listen, and take some kind of action.

Label Review. 

There You Go! (with Dorris Henderson), John Renbourn, Bert & John (with Bert Jansch), Another Monday, Watch The Stars (by Dorris Henderson), Sir John Alot, and 11 bonus tracks. 

Our Overview. 

Long acknowledged as one of the greatest and most influential acoustic guitarists to emerge from the British folk scene, the late John Renbourn is best known to the wider world for his membership of Pentangle, the genre-busting band that he was instrumental in bringing together in 1967.

However, Renbourn recorded extensively both before and during the band’s early genesis, with a trio of solo albums joined by two vital collaborations with American-born folk singer Dorris Henderson as well as ‘Bert And John, his joint album with Bert Jansch in 1966. The set also contains a clutch of bonus tracks from the same period (including a marvellous psychedelic folk rendition of the Love song “Message To Pretty”) to shine the solo spotlight on a man that folk club organiser and future ZigZag founder Pete Frame once dubbed “the stoned Julian Bream of folk guitar”.

Housed in a clamshell box that boasts replica album sleeves, some very rare photos and a new essay on the man, the 6-CD set ‘Unpentangled’ anthologises that essential but often overlooked body of early work.

Label Review. 

2019 debut album also available on CD.

Our Overview. 

London, UK based Johnny Lloyd releases his much awaited debut album ‘Next Episode Starts in 15 Seconds’. Turning the page on his days as frontman of chart-conquering Camden four-piece indie-rock band Tribes, Johnny Lloyd has spent the years since their disbandment in 2013 starting afresh, rebuilding, taking career risks and forging a new path of his own definition. On the long road to his debut solo album Johnny initially began forging close bonds with like-minds including Jamie T, Mike Crossey (The 1975, Hozier) and Hugo White (The Maccabees), all of whom would help him to release two solo EPs in close succession: 2016’s ‘Dreamland’ and 2017’s ‘Eden’.

With the EPs warmly received and the reaction fervent at the 200+ live shows across the globe in support of the releases, public appetite was clearly ripe for Johnny’s debut album. However, with a surge in demand for Johnny to score a variety of film and TV projects (from the Rolling Stones’ ‘The Quiet One’ Film to 2019 feature film ‘RareBeasts’ and more), it would not be for another two years until the songs would come into fruition. And yet, accruing songs all the while through this busy period, with a vision for his solo debut Johnny finally felt the time and music was right for it to finally materialise.

Very much indicative of his new found direction and a bold departure from his indie-rock roots, ’Next Episode Starts in 15 Seconds’ sees Johnny’s sound metamorphosing to find kindred spirits with the likes of Nick Drake or Sparklehorse, channeling that hushed, alternative-folk sound that is so eternally enchanting. Checking into a 10ft square bunker in north London in late 2018 with producer Nathan Coen, the pair began to flesh out the bones of the record, operating with a hard-and-fast rule for each recorded track to be completed in “no more than three takes”. Though often a challenging process, the results as such were remarkable.

With its rawest, purest and most endearing qualities perfectly preserved, the collection of tracks began to glisten like diamonds in the rough. Dusted with finishing touches from Frank Turner, Hugo White and Adam Prendergast (from Harry Styles’s band), these esteemed guest appearances finessed the album with a touch of magic and drew the album into crystalline focus. Adding a last touch of class, the album was mastered at the infamous Abbey Road Studios by Frank Arkwright in late 2018.

Rich with personal renovations and revelations inspired by a whirlwind of changes in Johnny’s life over the past few years, the intimate and mature songs of the album tackle growth, getting sober and becoming a father, in a record that earnestl witnesses this songwriter enter back into the spotlight and truly come of age.

Label Review.

2019 album also available on White Vinyl.

Our Overview.

Punk rock band Frank Carter & The Rattlesnakes return with their highly anticipated - and in the bands word “most important” - third studio album, ‘End Of Suffering’ following on from the bands sophomore album 2017’s ‘Modern Ruin’.

Making their name with full-bodied, hard-hitting punk rock reinforced with a hard rock undercurrent, Frank Carter & the Rattlesnakes were formed in 2015 by Carter, former lead singer with the successful U.K. punk band Gallows featuring Carter on lead vocals, Dean Richardson (formerly of Heights) on guitar, Thomas Mitchener (another alumnus of Gallows) on bass, and Memby Jago (who'd previously worked with the Ghost of a Thousand) on drums. The band was soon touring regularly in the U.K. and Europe, and in 2016 they introduced a new lineup, with Mitchener and Jago replaced by a new rhythm section of drummer Gareth Grover (formerly of Gallows and Haunts) and bassist Tom "Tank" Barclay.

Their new album ’End Of Suffering’ - named after the Buddhist term for enlightenment - is the sound of a band entering an entirely new realm of the senses, a forty minute rock’n’roller coaster of molten-hot bangers, scorched-soul ballads and grunge lullabies laced through with a lacerating lyrical honesty. “I was in the middle of going through a divorce, and I was coming to terms with the way my relationships were going to change, in terms of co-parenting, so it wasn't easy to write a lot of these songs," says Frank with typical candour. "Everyone says you've got to ride the wave, well that's easy if you've got a surfboard. I can't even fuckin' swim." And he added “Whatever life is throwing at you right now, it will pass, choose to let it hit you, or duck and watch it fly past much faster and off into your history, of which there have been many obstacles thrown your way and you have overcome them all.”

The album was ecorded at Chapel Studios with Cam Blackwood (George Ezra/Jack Savoretti) and mixed by Alan Moulder (Nine Inch Nails/ Queens Of The Stone Age) and is released on CD and White Vinyl.

Label Review. 

16 tracks showcasing Rory’s virtuoso performances of electric, acoustic and live blues. Largely made up of previously unreleased recordings. Also available on CD, and triple CD. 

Our Overview. 

In what would have been the 50th year of Rory Gallagher’s recording career, comes a new compilation: ‘Blues’. From the vaults of the Gallagher estate’s tape archive comes this collection of rare and unreleased recordings of Rory playing his favourite blues material. Ranging from never heard before tracks to special guest sessions with legendary blues artists (Muddy Waters / Albert King) and lost radio sessions, this album uncovers Rory’s love of the blues throughout his solo career from 1971 right through to 1994.

The deluxe edition comprises 90% unreleased material and features performances with musical legends such as Muddy Waters, Albert King, Jack Bruce, Lonnie Donegan and Chris Barber. The Deluxe Edition also comes with an extensive booklet comprising previously unseen pictures if Rory plus a new essay by award winning Blues / Rock writer Jas Obrecht.

“ “A Million Miles Away” was the first song I learned on guitar. The story goes that when Jimi Hendrix was asked how it felt to be the greatest guitarist in the world, he answered, “I don’t know. Go ask Rory Gallagher.” “- Ed Sheeran

“When I was with Humble Pie and
we were all just beginning to feel like we were getting it together, Rory was the one 
to measure yourself against. To be able
to play like that with such intensity was awesome and really the only other guitarist that had that ability was Hendrix.
I could never get a sound like that from
my Strat no matter how hard I tried.
He was a real credit to music and pushed it to another level altogether.” - Peter Frampton

Label Review.

2019 album also available on Vinyl.

Our Overview.

‘Invitation’ is the third album from singer songwriter Heather Woods Broderick - Sharon Van Etten’s longtime collaborator and band member. The album takes it’s title from a Thomas Moore quote about the importance of being open to change and newness: “To keep the unfolding self alive, you have to open yourself to change every step of the way. Of course there are times when it is appropriate to step back, settle down, and maybe not move for a while. But to be a person means to be faced every minute with the decision to live OR die; To accept the invitations for yet more vitality or to decline them out of fear or lethargy.”

Much like a painter with an eye for landscapes Heather nature to colour her stirring style of folk rock/dream pop. ‘Invitation’ was conceived on the Oregon coast, an outlier among American landscapes, where vast stretches of empty beach are decorated with silver driftwood and towering pines. It is here among the dunes, tide pools and colossal rock formations that Heather spent her childhood summer day-trips. And it is here that she returned as an adult to construct her latestt album, an album of dreamy baroque-pop that swells and whispers with grand string arrangements, intimately descriptive lyrics, and impassioned songcraft built around earnest piano melodies, painting a lifelike picture of the locale in which it was written.

Throughout ‘Invitation’, floral tendrils of sound design and dynamic strings decorate the edges of each track, propelling the album beyond mere singer-songwriter fare into something altogether more grand and immersive in scope. ‘Invitation’ features vocals and synth contributions from Peter Broderick. RIYL: Sharon Van Etten, Weyes Blood, Marissa Nadler, Julianna Barwick, Julia Holter.

Label Review. 

2019 album also available on CD.

Our Overview. 

Kentucky rock band Cage The Elephant are back with their fifth album ‘Social Cues’. Social Cues was written while frontman Matt Shultz was grappling with the dissolution of a relationship. In an effort to better sort through everything, he “explored the hidden recesses of his psyche, creating characters to tell different parts of his personal story. Shultz leaned into the darkness of his divorce. “I saw a depth of potential evil that I had never experienced firsthand,” he says. Watching Netflix’s ‘I Am a Killer’, he started writing from the perspective of “this character: this soft-spoken, shy-eyed murderer.”

After nearly a decade, Cage had their biggest success with 2015’s ‘Tell Me I’m Pretty’, produced by Dan Auerbach, which earned the group a Grammy for Best Rock Album. After that, they wanted to be more ambitious. Inspired by how Brian Jones played unconventional instruments on Stones classics like “Under My Thumb,” they decided to get members on instruments they weren’t used to — guitarist Nick Bockrath traded guitar for Mellotron for the propulsive opener, “Broken Boy,” and for pedal steel on the psychedelic anthem “Black Madonna.”

The album is produced by John Hill, who has worked with high-profile names like Florence + The Machine, Santigold and Portugal. ‘Social Cues’ will also feature a guest appearance by pop provocateur Beck.

Label Review.

2019 album also available on Vinyl.

Our Overview.

Fat White Family’s third album ‘Serfs Up’ is a lush and masterful work, lascivious and personal. Tropical, sympathetic and monumental. It invites the listener in rather than repel them through wilful abrasion. Fat White Family have broken previous default patterns of behaviour, and as such their third album heralds a new day dawning.

Gregorian chants, jackboot glam beats, string flourishes, sophisticated and lush cocktail exotica, electro funk and the twin spirits of Alan Vega and Afrika Bambaataa punctuate the record at various junctures, while the dramatic production of Feet is as immaculately-rendered as ‘Hounds of Love’-era Kate Bush. The dirt is still there of course, but scrape it away and you’ll find a purring engine, gleaming chrome.

Echoing within the arrangements throughout are traces of blissed-out 60s Tropicalia, Velvets/Bowie sleaze-making and star-gazing, 80s digital dancehall, David Axelrod-style easy listening, joyous Pet Shop Boys synth crescendos, acid house, post-PIL dub, metropolitan murder ballads, doom-disco and mouth-gurning, slow-mo psychedelia so by the time it comes to a close only a fool would deny that Serfs Up! is something very special. No longer is unadulterated music malevolence Fat White Family’s stock in trade; this is cultivated music for the head, the heart. For tomorrow’s unborn children.

Where once they soundtracked a grubby Britain of vape shops, Fray Bentos dinners and blackened tin-foil, a crepuscular comedown realm stalked by Shipman, Goebbels and Mark E. Smith, Fat White Family now inhabit another cosmos entirely. Serfs Up! is the product of a band of outlaws reborn. Few but themselves could have forecast it: Fat White Family survived. Fat White Family got wise. Fat White Family got sophisticated.

Having released their second album, ‘Songs For Our Mothers’ in January 2016, core-members Lias and Nathan Saoudi relocated to Sheffield and set about writing the album. Joined by co-conspirator Saul Adamczewski and recorded at their own Champzone studios in the Attercliffe area of the city, Serfs Up! was finished in late autumn 2018 with the help of long-time collaborator, Liam D. May and features a guest appearance from Baxter Dury on “Tastes Good With The Money.”

Label Review. 

2019 album also available on CD.

Our Overview. 

Californian band Wand’s new release ‘Laughing Matter follows on from 2016’s ‘Plum’. Wand is the shifting but unmistakable collaboration between Sofia Arreguin (keys, vocals), Cory Hanson (guitar, vocals), Robert Cody (guitar), Lee Landey (bass) and Evan Burrows (drums). ‘Laughing Matter’ is marked by the confidence and exuberance of a band that has lived, feuded, thrived and grown together through years of dedicated jamming, touring and recording, across Western and Eastern states, continents and mind-sets.

Largely recorded on the infamous southern border of broken, decadent America, ‘Laughing Matter’ belongs to the afterlife. With no major label funding, no management or lawyers, no corporate distribution, near zero social media presence and no commercial dealings whatsoever (with only poor, pitiful Drag City to help them carry the flag), Wand have toured the world a bajillion times in five years and made four varied and compelling records while accumulating a devoted following. There may be a future in rock music beyond slapping rote regurgitations onto a lifeless syntactic grid. Wand are proof you don’t have to be an industry toy to sell records - with devotion and time the seeds you plant with intention and care will grow back into the world.

Swerving between out-of-focus parable, travel diary, pep talk, polemic, love song, and lullaby, ‘Laughing Matter’ is a tough and tender album, its eyes on a lot of prizes. Where ‘Plum’ held the tension of its five band members getting on their feet, the songs on ‘Laughing Matter’ are concentrated and relaxed, even as they search for the right accusations to hurl at cynics and megalomaniacs.

The music is distilled and sculpted from an ash heap of collected improvisations, riven with audio-verite; the methods and instrumentation are traditional handmade rock ‘n’ roll. Yet the unorthodox arrangements of ‘Scarecrow’, the joyous embrace of pastiche and disruption on ‘Walkie Talkie’, the radical eclecticism of shapes and approaches on ‘Thin Air’, the ascendant choruses of ‘Wonder’ are all decidedly contemporary. This music is not revivalism or throwback; Wand are a precision instrument, a band that probes and teases style, genre, trope and anachronism into material, according to a law of motion that is aimed directly toward an uncertain future.

‘Laughing Matter’ is a record about love in a time of terror, about making the best use of the surveillance technology available today. It calls you down from panic room labyrinths, to work the deep tissue of unravelling trauma we all carry so dear. The 15 songs on this record face their energy outward, to take with you through a common world that can’t suffer its human abusers much longer. ‘Laughing Matter’ encourages you to shake hands with your old demons, to lay your pathologies to rest, to hold your spirit close and let your body do what’s next.

Label Review. 

2019 album. Also available on vinyl. 

Our Overview. 

Pioneering post-punk band, the Gang of Four were formed in the bricolage punk rock fallout culture of late seventies Leeds – a place where art was a mirror and guitars were machine guns. Gang of Four tore up the template and made sense of the question marks thrown up by year zero.

They redesigned rock in the punk aftermath, taking the incendiary energy of the form and crisscrossing it with funk, stripping away the baggage of rock excess and creating a new stripped-down music that was full of agit energy, heavy grooves, shrapnel guitars and politically charged lyrics matching the fervour of the times. Swerving trad rock rhythms, the beats were invented from scratch and every instrument played a pivotal role in the sound in a non-hierarchical structure.

The band then bounced around the music business releasing a series of albums that have been a direct inspiration to a diverse selection of bands who wanted to deconstruct rock music without losing its sense of excitement, from the surrounding post-punk generation to the big bands that followed. The Red Hot Chili Peppers, INXS, R.E.M., U2, Rage Against the Machine, Nirvana and Massive Attack have all spoken of their debt to Gang of Four.

More recently, the band’s influence has become almost universal—now everybody talks about Gang of Four. From Franz Ferdinand to St Vincent, from Sleater Kinny and James Murphy of LCD Soundsystem to Nine Inch Nails: today’s creators of angular rock music have GO4’s influence and imprint all over them. The band is reaching an urban audience with Frank Ocean sampling them on his latest album and Pharrell name-checking the band in his interviews.

Inevitably GO4 disbanded in 1984 but reformed later that decade, since then releasing a series of albums that emphatically demonstrate their capacity for invention and twisting energy. The line-up now includes Thomas McNeice—the bass player joined in 2008—and John ‘Gaoler’ Sterry, who has supplied vocals since 2011.

Label Review.

220pp paperback. Between 1987 and 1997, Jim Bob rode a decade-long rollercoaster from the UK's pub and club scene to the top of the album charts and back again, leaving behind a trail of hit records, legendary gigs and enough t-shirts to clothe a small nation. As recounted in his first autobiography, the critically acclaimed 'Goodnight Jim Bob', Carter The Unstoppable Sex Machine toured the world and sold the records, during the UK's last period of genuine musical free-for-all, mutating from a two man and drum machine combo to an extensive six (sometimes seven) piece group along the way. But then the rollercoaster stopped.

Our Overview.

Says Jim Bob of his autobiography “I’ve written a book. It’s called ‘Jim Bob from Carter – In the Shadow of my Former Self’. It’s the sequel to ‘Goodnight Jim Bob – On the Road With Carter The Unstoppable Sex Machine’ and picks up where that, let’s face it, brilliant book left off. It’s 1997, Carter have just broken up and I’m embarking on a journey (yes journey) into the unknown. I don’t even know what to call myself ­– Jim, Jimmy, James, the Jimster – or exactly what I’m going to do with my life. The book tells the story of that search for a new identity (I’m like Jason Bourne in that respect).”

‘Jim Bob From Carter (In The Shadow Of My Former Self)’ documents Jim’s ongoing journey as a solo artist and author – a man in search of who he is, while constantly being reminded who he was. Between 1987 and 1997, Jim Bob rode a decade-long rollercoaster from the UK’s pub and club scene to the top of the album charts and back again, leaving behind a trail of hit records, legendary gigs and enough t-shirts to clothe a small nation. As recounted in his first autobiography, the critically acclaimed ‘Goodnight Jim Bob’, Carter The Unstoppable Sex Machine toured the world and sold the records, during the UK’s last period of genuine musical free-for-all, mutating from a two man and drum machine combo to an extensive six (sometimes seven) piece group along the way. But then the rollercoaster stopped…..

So what next for a recovering former rock star? Whatever happened to that bloke from Carter?

‘Jim Bob From Carter (In The Shadow Of My Former Self)’ documents Jim’s ongoing journey as a solo artist and author – a man in search of who he is, while constantly being reminded who he was. Whether he’s singing in a disco-pop band, performing solo acoustic ballads, writing novels or acting in a musical at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, it’s clear he is still, for many people, Jim Bob from Carter. At first Jim sees this legacy as a burden and something to escape from, but gradually he learns to accept, embrace and eventually celebrate (hooray!) his glorious past.

This is a funny music book – the funniest music book ever written, according to the author – about Jim Bob’s extended gap year between the acrimonious break-up of Carter in 1997 to their eventual reformation in 2007 (and crinomious break-up again in 2014). Find out how bands choose their names, what it’s like to be sworn at by Ian Dury, how it feels to discover yourself on a pub trivia machine under the category ‘Where are they Now?’ and why there isn’t a prime time Saturday night TV show called ‘Britain’s Got Authors’.

There’s also the usual boring stuff about lyrics and a few music business clichés, like earlier in this blurb where the word ‘journey’ was unnecessarily used. Jim Bob is now a successful author (Storage Stories, Driving Jarvis Ham, and two Frank Derrick books) and solo artist, both on record and in concert (Carter material guaranteed). He lives in that London.

Label Review. 

2019 album. Also available on CD. 

Our Overview. 

Tom Rowlands and Ed Simons have been together for 30 years but it wasn't until 1992 that they began in earnest, initially Djing as 'The Dust Brothers' but soon turned to producing their own instrumental tracks to insert into their sets. They were spotted by the Junior Boy's Own label who released their first single "Song To The Siren" in 1993. As well as building their own repertoire, they remixed other artists and quickly made a name for themselves. They probably knew they had made it when the original Dust Brothers (a us production team who masterminded the Beastie Boys second album 'Paul's Boutique') requested they change their name. And thus the Chemical Brothers were born. A deal with Virgin Records saw their debut album 'Exit Planet Dust' released in 1995 and by the time of their second album 'Dig Your Own Hole', they had scored back to back UK Number 1's and every studio album since then has also made Number One!

To realise their ninth album 'No Geography', The Chemical Brothers built tracks vocal samples; voices were wound tightly into music that Tom Rowlands and Ed Simons found themselves following wherever it led them. Snatches of dialogue from the late ’60s experimental Dial-A-Poem project were chosen that reflected the mood in the studio. Songs were road tested in front of audiences as part of the 2018 live set (which took in two shows at Alexandra Palace – the band’s biggest UK headline shows to date) and honed in regular DJ sets the world over.

'No Geography' features "Free Yourself" and "MAH" (described as “a short & bloody ride into our modern media psychosis” by The Guardian) in addition to "Got To Keep On". Several of the tracks on 'No Geography' feature vocals by Norwegian singer/songwriter Aurora who wrote and recorded parts in the band’s studio in close collaboration with the band. Japanese rapper Nene features on the record’s opening cut "Eve of Destruction".

Label Review.

2019 album also available on Vinyl.

Our Overview.

‘Hurting Kind’ is John Paul White’s - formerly one-half of Grammy-winning duo the Civil Wars and Single Lock co-founder - third solo album. White, who recently debuted the forthcoming album’s “The Long Way Home,” a bright, muscular track, notes that unlike the gothic folk and acoustic ballads populating his 2016 solo album ‘Beulah’, his new album ‘The Hurting Kind’ was inspired by listening to artists including Jim Reeves, Patsy Cline, Roy Orbison, Chet Atkins and Bill Porter. Drawing on these timeless influences, White sought out classic writers like Whisperin’ Bill Anderson and Bobby Braddock to collaborate with. “Coming out of each and every one of these situations, I got a resounding thumbs-up that I was on that right track,” says White of the collaborations. “I didn’t need anybody else’s approval after that.” 

With ‘The Hurting Kind’, White draws on the lush, orchestrated music made in Nashville in the early 1960s, writing about overwhelming love, unraveling relationships and the fading memory of a loved one.

“I approached this album differently on the songwriting side before I ever got into the studio,” says White. “I really wanted there to be a torch song quality to it, the classic timeless quality. To not be afraid of the big note, and not be afraid of the drama. ”The new record, co-produced by White with Alabama Shakes’ Ben Tanner, features vocal assistance from Lee Ann Womack, Erin Rae, and the Secret Sisters, and was recorded in a number of studios around Muscle Shoals, Alabama, not far from White’s home base in Florence. Co-writers on the project include Nashville songwriting legends Bobby Braddock and Bill Anderson.

In the half-decade since the breakup of White’s duo, the Civil Wars, the singer-songwriter has remained busy as a producer, working on a number of acclaimed albums, including Donnie Fritts’ 2015 ‘Oh My Goodness’ and, more recently, Lera Lynn’s 2018 duets collection ‘Plays Well With Others.’